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  • From: "L. Santoyo" <santoyo@earthflow.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc: permaculture@openpermaculture.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] pc learning
  • Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:01:53 -0800

Adam at eat the suburbs -(great name!)

about Hopkins' lines: *"...one of the things permaculture has been really
poor at (in my opinion) is on researching itself. Enthusiastic teachers went
around the world teaching tools and techniques, yet with no-one following up
behind studying if these things actually worked..." *

IMO, this has always been, and may continue to be for some time, an issue
-but I think that it speaks mainly to the experience and qualifications
(and/or lack-there-of) of individual Permaculture Teachers -not to the
principles/protocols of Permaculture Design. I like that Hopkins responds
to Greer first with the TT disclaimer -then goes on to defend his movement
with a great sound bite analogy. Same can be said for Permaculture
though...

I like to say that "you don't DO permaculture... you USE permaculture in
what you do." In my opinion, permaculture is best described as the
application of decision making principles -because (I think we all know) in
Permaculture there are no "cookie cutter" designs or solutions, Permaculture
is not the technique, the strategy or the technology -but is the way you put
things together to "arrive" at the solutions (or at least at a point of
departure).

Teachers should teach "analysis" and "relative location" -give the theory
and the physics behind things and then let students arrive at their best
application -That helps lead to sound and creative design -and that's good
instruction. Why are some teachers teaching what they haven't experienced
or confirmed is the question that comes to my mind. We've got to remember to
teach our students and our teachers to "always triangulate" -get
confirmation, on everything, from at least a couple points.

I think that the mythology may have originated with Jerome Ostentowski's
design (central rocky mountain permaculture). I saw him present this design
at one of Mollison's design courses in the 80's -Jerome actually heated *the
soil* inside the greenhouse with the ambient air piped through underground
perforated-pipe with electric fans (and yes, of course, he separated the
chickens from the produce!)

Also, I have recently taken some TT trainings and do plan to take the TT
Trainers course AND I thought that Greer's *"Premature Triumphalism"* piece
had some excellent points about the TT Movement -that I tend to agree with.

for the revolution,

L. Santoyo
www.earthflow.com



On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 4:00 PM, adam @ ets <adam@eatthesuburbs.org> wrote:

>From Rob Hopkins at TransitionCulture.org:
>
> > It feels vital to me that Transition doesn't repeat some of the things
> that
> > the permaculture movement has got wrong. As my recent post about chicken
> > greenhouses<
> http://transitionculture.org/2008/10/20/in-search-of-the-fabled-permaculture-chickengreenhouse/>showed,
> one of the things permaculture has been really poor at (in my
> > opinion) is on researching itself. Enthusiastic teachers went around the
> > world teaching tools and techniques, yet with no-one following up behind
> > studying if these things actually worked. I am trying to get hold of an
> > electronic copy of a brilliant analysis of the Australian Permaculture
> > movement by Russ Grayson which holds many important lessons for
> Transition,
> > which I will post here when I do. Being honest and open about what works
> > and what doesn't is vital.
> <
>
> http://transitionculture.org/2008/11/20/responding-to-greers-thoughts-on-premature-triumphalism/
>
> Two worthwhile posts there, the quoted one mostly about how to balance
> enthusiasm with not pretending to have all the answers, and the linked post
> about chicken greenhouses, and if they really work in practice.
>
> --
> www.eatthesuburbs.org
> www.permablitz.net
> www.energybulletin.net




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